


View from a Train Window

by Anonymous



Category: The Half of It (2020)
Genre: Fluff, Pining, Vignette, i really don't know how to tag this, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:48:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23961007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Ellie has been watching trains come and leave since she was thirteen. Being a passenger is new.(Set immediately after the movie ends.)
Relationships: Ellie Chu & Paul Munsky, Ellie Chu/Aster Flores (mentioned)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 90
Collections: Anonymous





	View from a Train Window

Ellie has been watching trains come and leave since she was thirteen. Being a passenger is new. 

So is having a sweet, sentimental moron chasing after her. As if he has any chance of keeping up with a moving train. As if attempting the impossible is something you just do for someone you love, even you know if it’s dumb and futile. As if Ellie is someone he loves. 

_Wussy,_ Ellie thinks, fond, as her cheeks grow damp and her heart grows warm. She’ll miss Paul. She’ll miss her dad, too, and she feels the weight of missing both of them already, despite having barely left the station. 

(And she’ll miss Aster, but that’s different. She’s miss Aster in the wistful, distant kind of way that she missed Aster even when they saw each other at school every day. Is it possible to miss the idea of someone? Ellie thinks so. The time that she had spent with Aster was fleeting at best, but it had left a lasting impression, like a song that gets stuck in your head after you’ve only heard a few lines.

Ellie suspects that Aster will be stuck in her head for a while. For the foreseeable future, definitely. Probably for at least the next couple of years.

But then what happens…?)

Ellie looks ahead for a while, not focusing on anything in particular. Lost in thought. She has spent so much of her childhood resenting Squahamish that her sadness at the idea of leaving it comes as a surprise. It’s not an entirely unwelcome one, though. Being sad to leave means that she’s leaving behind something good. And anyway, it’s not like she’ll _stay_ sad—Ellie will cry and curse Paul Munsky for his evidently contagious wussiness, but then she’ll look through the train window in the way that she’s fantasized about doing for years (from the inside out instead of the outside in) and see the world passing by, new and bold and ready for her perusal. As open as Squahamish was stifling. 

She brought a copy of _The Remains of the Day_ to read on the train ride. It’s her original copy of the book—dog-eared, highlighted, with cracks down the paperback spine and a faded coffee stain near the bottom corner that left the tips of the back pages slightly warped. It might be an odd choice of reading material to start off a new chapter of her life with, but there’s always been something about it that leaves her feeling hopeful (in a melancholy way). Ellie opens it to the first page, and the first line stares up at her: _It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days._

**Author's Note:**

> Full credit to Kazuo Ishiguro for the final sentence. If you haven't read The Remains of the Day and you liked the tone of this movie, I highly recommend it!


End file.
